Dervishes

by Beth Helms

  “I understand,” he says quietly.

  “I doubt it,” she says, turning to leave.

  “You are welcome anytime,” he says to her, as she opens the door and the brisk air rushes in. “Come back anytime.”

  She stands outside the trailer catching her breath. The sky is clear, the air scented autumn gold and red; fallen leaves, still soft, dying only at their very edges, litter the uneven concrete. Around the corner, the stables are quiet except for the sound of the horses’ mingled breath, their huffing, indecipherable conversations.

  Grace thinks of that terrible party she’d been to at Simone’s and of the sound the hairbrush made slamming into Canada’s teeth the following morning. She’d had a rare hangover; there had been too many questions the evening before and too much innuendo. Paige Trotter had come up on her at the party, just after Simone had glided away. Grace was relieved to see her.

  “This is dreadful,” Grace told her, her eyes on Simone’s back. “I’m a terrible fraud.” She was aware of John and Catherine, whom she had just seen disappear into the kitchen together, and of Canada—who was hiding behind the grand piano with what looked like a brandy snifter.

  Paige laughed. “Well, it does take some practice.”

  Paige observed the room appraisingly and popped a canapé into her wide, bright mouth. She smiled as John passed—there he was again, out of thin air—and lifted a fluted glass from his tray. Then she touched her hand to his sleeve to halt him and spoke to him in Turkish. He nodded, replied softly, the whole cant and affect of his body surprisingly deferential. As he moved away, threading effortlessly through the mass of bodies, Paige turned to Grace and looked at her through decorative, jewel-rimmed spectacles.

  “Buck up,” she said. “You presume people are more interested in you than they are. It’s a common mistake. Look at this lot. Do you really think they give a damn where your husband is? Do you think they care if you tell them the truth? That’s a bit of an arrogance, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  They were standing then beside the perfectly arranged dinner table. At each setting was a cut-glass bowl of glittering ice, tinted Aegean blue; fat pink shrimp nestled close around the rim.

  “Look,” said Paige. “John has discovered food coloring.”

  “Even he knows I’m lying,” said Grace. “The damn houseboy.”

  “Oh well,” Paige said. “If anyone does, it’s him. But he’s got his own secrets, that one. He couldn’t be less interested in yours.”

  “What is it about him that makes me so uncomfortable?” Grace asked. “And that girl. I get a shiver every time I see them together. Doesn’t Simone notice?”

  Paige shrugged. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you.”

  Grace surveyed the table. The flowers and the shimmering silver, the glowing tapers, the snowy linen. “My, but Firdis is a clod,” she said. “This is so beautiful.”

  “Isn’t it exquisite?” Paige said. “Don’t you want to just smash it to bits?”

  And then the next morning, while brushing Canada’s hair out, Grace had noticed a tiny bluish bruise in the place Simone’s fingers had been. The woman had actually pinched her. Grace’s head throbbed; her eyelids felt fat as slugs. She had not liked Simone’s insinuating tone; the whole situation had her jumpy as a cat.

  Grace was thinking about this, all of it, while she was tugging the brush through Canada’s horrendous rat’s nest, wondering, Did she sleep in chewing gum? And just then Canada had snapped her head around, whining that Grace was yanking her bald, and in that instant, which seemed in retrospect frozen and wide, full of opportunities for withdrawals and retractions, Grace had not stilled the brush—not slowed it at all.

  9

  SIMONE WAS WILD. SHE BANGED THROUGH THE APARTMENT, slamming doors and tearing through the contents of drawers. We heard silverware clanging, cabinet doors opening and closing with force. We heard her swear—unusual, for Simone hated vulgarity. No, that’s not entirely true: she hated it in others.

  Sitting on the twin beds in Catherine’s room, we were folding her leotards into little pink squares. We had accumulated several cubes on the bedspread. Catherine looked up and our eyes met.

  “What is she looking for?” I whispered. Though the door was closed we took no chances—we suspected Simone of having supernatural hearing, as well as eyes in the back of her head.

  “I don’t know.”

  In my mind I inventoried the things of Simone’s that were hidden in my room—stray bits of cutlery and camisoles, a crystal saltcellar, pieces of costume jewelry. Why did they do it? They each had their own reasons, I suppose, but part of it must have been to drive her a little mad, to shake her composure.

  Simone opened the door to the room and stood there in the doorway. Her hair was mussed and her expression stormy—she looked like a woman who had been on a killing spree, or was contemplating one.

  “I’m missing my diamond earrings,” she said. “The good ones your father gave me for our anniversary. Have you taken them?”

  “No,” Catherine said with total self-possession. Simone no longer had the power to rattle her. She had taken something of John’s too, I saw then, some of his coolness, his disdain.

  “Well, if they don’t turn up by this evening there’s going to be serious trouble.” What could Simone have meant by that? She certainly couldn’t have been offering amnesty.

  Catherine shrugged. She patted the stack of leotards and smiled.

  “You must have misplaced them.”

  “When have you known me to misplace something?”

  There was a moment of impasse; they observed each other.

  I said, “Did you look in your jewelry box?”

  Simone’s eyes slid to me and narrowed. “Yes,” she said. “Of course I have. Were you two playing dress-up?”

  “We don’t play dress-up,” Catherine said calmly. “We haven’t in ages.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “We’re too old for that.”

  But we had done, and not so long ago. Harem girls and bedouin brides, favored daughters of the caliph—whirling in filmy bits and pieces taken from Simone’s bedroom, scarves tucked into our waists and necklaces strung round our foreheads, fat stolen jewels of topaz and amethyst and aquamarine, like great glittering tears, dangling in our eyes.

  Simone closed the door with a bang; the noise took a moment to die away. I looked at Catherine.

  “Diamond earrings?” I said. “You took her earrings?”

  “She left them by the sink in the kitchen. Stupid cow.” Catherine began plaiting a bit of her hair. Her expression was serene.

  “Where are they?”

  “John sold them, down on Tunali. She pays him next to nothing; his family is so poor you can’t imagine.”

  “Are you kidding me? Are you crazy?” They’d obviously lost their minds.

  “Relax,” she said. “They’re gone anyway.”

  “She’s going to kill you. I can’t imagine what she’ll do to him.”

  “Calm down,” she said. “She’ll never know.”

  “Have you met your mother?”

  “I don’t care,” said Catherine, in that new, preternaturally calm voice. “I don’t care at all.”

  But I was terrified: I pictured Simone storming up the hill to our apartment and rummaging around in my room. I thought about whether or not my mother would let her. I couldn’t decide.

  “I’m getting rid of it all,” I said. “Today.”

  “Do what you want.”

  I stood up. “Jesus,” I said. “Good God.”

  Catherine smiled. She said, “Avallah.”

  Really, what could Catherine have known of John’s family? We lived like kings in Turkey. I did not need my mother to point this out to me, though she liked to. Once, my father had taken his driver Kadir home and I had been along in the car. The poverty, the difference in our situations, shocked me—their tin-roofed house was little more than a run-in shed, open to the street; the
re were hordes of dirty, barefoot children, a fire burning in a rusted barrel. It struck me that Kadir was ashamed for us to see where he lived—even me, a mere child, no one of the least importance.

  But my father climbed from the car as though it were the easiest thing in the world, as if anyone could do it, and let the children swarm him. They rummaged through his pockets—which contained, it turned out, all manner of small, delightful, mysterious American things, made of sugar and plastic—and then he sat down on a box in the courtyard, mindless of his suit, his coat, his shoes, and they crawled into his lap and he made them giggle and blush, the girls and boys alike. Somehow nearly an hour passed in this way—all of us sitting on upturned boxes in the packed-dirt yard, shadows flickering on the corrugated tin roof, my father and Kadir speaking in Turkish and English—until the light was entirely gone and then my father sighed and climbed to his feet and shook Kadir’s hand. We got back into the car and drove home through the dark streets. We climbed back through the hills of Ankara into the bright sections, the warm hotels and restaurants and shops, and my father pulled me near him on the seat and when I turned my face into his collar he smelled of smoke and all those children’s bodies and himself, all of it together.

  Yet, I had never thought of John outside of Simone’s apartment, beyond her clutches. Certainly he left at night and returned early in the morning, but in my memories he was always there, ever busy. I had never considered where he lived or that he might have a family waiting for him—brothers, sisters, aunts, a mother. It was beyond my imagination.

  Then, sometime in October, he took Catherine home to his family: they rode in a dolmuş—a kind of shared taxi—through the city and into a section of it she could not satisfactorily describe. I was shocked to learn that Catherine and John had left the apartment together. I pictured the two of them side by side in broad daylight, how he would have shepherded her through the traffic and the surging crowds. She was always nervous in crowds, and disliked the noise and the closeness, the shoving and coarse talk of the merchants and shoppers. When I imagined them together, out in the world, I was half mad with jealousy. I saw his hand comforting her elbow, his mouth close at her ear.

  The winding streets always confused Catherine, though the city was laid out like a map in my mind—the hills of Gasi Osman Paşa, the twisting ascent to Çankaya above the botanical gardens and the British Embassy, the descent into the business district or the longer drive through the gates of the Old City, where we sometimes went to the baths.

  I questioned her mercilessly about that trip:

  How had they gotten out?

  Quite easily, she said. Through the front door.

  Where had Simone been?

  At the dressmaker.

  When was this trip?

  I don’t quite remember; not so very long ago.

  But I wanted to know every detail: the condition of the seats in the dolmuş, the markings of the animals they would have seen, every smell and shadow and hue of the day. But she was different by then and it was no longer only Simone who could not reach her. This was a new Catherine: taciturn, superior, dismissive.

  It was fine, she said. Nothing too interesting. She had lately begun observing herself in the mirror and I remember her braiding her hair, looking at me in the glass.

  I pressed her to tell me about his family, his home, his manner around them. “Why in the world do you want to know?” she asked. I thought, not for the first time, that he was wasting himself on her.

  “We had tea with his mother and about a hundred other smelly old women,” she told me finally, her fingers still busy in her hair. “All of them look just like your mother’s maid.”

  Something dark and thick rose in my throat. “What did you talk about? How did he act? Where did Simone think you were?”

  But by then she had pulled the curtains around the two of them, and I was outside, searching for even a chink of light, the briefest admittance to their private world.

  “I thought you hated him,” I said.

  She put the brush down then and turned around. It was as if she hadn’t heard me. “Those women crawl all over him,” she said, and a thrilled amazement crept into her voice. “Patting him and patting him, kissing his cheeks.”

  But quickly her voice grew adult again. “But really, it was terrible,” she said. “The place smelled to high heaven.”

  How like Simone Catherine was at times. How had I not seen it before?

  We grew sick of each other, and the subject, and we wandered out into the kitchen and watched John prepare borek for the evening. I sat on the counter; she helped him. I despised seeing them together, working side by side, Catherine rolling the little cigars filled with spinach and cheese, John frying them in spitting grease, then draining them on paper towels laid on the counter. They whistled the same stupid little tune.

  “He simply worships me,” she would say from time to time. And her nose would wrinkle with the thought of it. Her face would flush pink and she would make her hands busy. My whole body would go squirmy with hatred.

  On the afternoon I’m thinking of, Catherine was wearing a crepey cotton shirt with a crocheted inset at the neck—we both had them, they were sold downtown and my mother had given in and bought them for us. Mine was red checked, Catherine’s blue. They had wide bat sleeves that ended in a point, edged with crochet work. Catherine’s sleeve was dragging in the bowl that held the filling, then dripping shreds of cheese and spinach across the counter and onto the polished floor. I thought for a moment to tell her but instead closed my mouth. I was sitting on the counter, banging my heels against the wood. John stepped away from the heat of the stove, lifted Catherine’s arm by the elbow and held it up to show her the mess she’d made. To accommodate this she had to drop her shoulder and let her arm be twisted up unnaturally, but she didn’t protest or pull away. Instead, her mouth formed a little o of surprise and then they laughed together, bodies bent toward each other. Then, while I watched, he bent his silky head and put the end of her sleeve in his mouth, pulling it through his teeth. He drew the wet point from his lips and let it fall against her skin. For a moment I almost felt it: the dampness of the crochet against my inner elbow, the idea of his mouth brushing my skin.

  I pushed off the counter and slammed out through the swinging kitchen door. I nearly collided with Simone, who was standing there, quiet as a statue. My breath was coming in ragged little gasps.

  “What is it?” she said. Why did concern or interest from Simone always sound the same—so treacly, so poisonous? She moved her thin eyebrows, one at a time; they twitched like pale, prehistoric millipedes.

  “It’s too hot in there.”

  She watched me carefully; we were standing close to each other. I saw the freckling on her neck, the way the skin there was getting papery. She put her hand out and touched the place where my heart was pounding. I don’t believe she’d ever laid a hand on me before.

  MECCA LIES south of Ankara. In the afternoons, John knelt on a small prayer rug in the laundry room, facing the alley. He bent with his hands outstretched on the faded rug, his forehead to the ground. I often came across him in this position, the sun pulsing through the small window onto his prostrate form. Passing the open door, I barely even glanced at him. His voice was low and muttering, and the words ran together. ‘Allah’ was the only one I could isolate.

  Then one afternoon, there was Catherine, bent similarly, with a dresser scarf over her head, alone in the aisle between the twin beds in her room, muttering something at first I couldn’t make out. No, then I recognized it: she was reciting the Lord’s Prayer, but in a singsong voice, jamming all the words together.

  I stood and watched her for a moment. Her blinds were closed; the light came in striped and angled. She was wearing a leotard and tights; the soles of her feet were gray.

  “What’s this?”

  “Ikindi Namazý,” she said. Her head was touching the floor as John’s did; it looked exceptionally uncomfortable.

/>   “Which is?” My voice must have held an edge of discomfort, of nervous superiority, the unease that comes of finding a familiar person engaged in an utterly foreign activity.

  “Afternoon prayer.” She sat up on her heels and pulled the scarf from her head. “Not to be confused with sabah, öğle, akşam, or yatsı.”

  “I don’t think they say the Our Father. I’m pretty sure it appears nowhere in the Koran.”

  “Technically no,” she said. “But my Arabic’s a little iffy.”

  I sank down on her bed. Catherine had rosary beads, for heaven’s sake. She could rattle off Hail Marys like nobody’s business. I stared at her, her slim shape, the not-quite-flatness of her chest beneath the bubblegum-colored leotard, her legs sheathed in those pig-pink tights.

  She showed me a book he’d given her with a tattered blue cover. She had been keeping it under her pillow.

  “What?” I said. “You’re converting? Give me a break.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Who knows.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  I opened the book randomly. I read this: “‘As a young child, the angel Jibreel visited Muhammad, ripped his chest open, removed his heart, extracted a blood clot, and returned him to normalcy.’ Wow. Great stuff.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said.

  Neither of us said anything for a long time. I couldn’t remember the last time John had given us candy, or we had done something secretive together, just the two of us.